Neeson's Highlands Fall Romantically Flat

Rob Roy

directed by Michael Caton-Jones

starring Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange

showing at Sony-Harvard Square

Luve is redder than the red, red rose--dear reader, it's turned a Technicolor shade. Poor old Robert Burns would gi'e a wee turn in his Scots grave if confronted by the all too earnest romping on "Rob Roy"'s highland stage. What is it about mediocrity of the sincerest kind that is so especially depressing? If you can't squeeze out the requisite tears over Liam Neeson's trials and tribulations, turn your thoughts to current mainstream moviedom and weep. "Rob Roy" is only symptomatic of a greater sag.

The film is set in eighteenth century Scotland, a time, a rolling script informs us, of great hardship for the Scots. In an age of corruption and despair, Robert Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson) upholds the ancient clannish honor. Supported by his bonny red-haired wife Mary (Jessica Lange) and a host of loyal MacGregors, Rob Roy matches wits and brawn with the dastardly Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth), bewigged defiler (and then some) of the MacGregor name.

MacGregor, like the ambitious Scotsman he is, gets the ball rolling when he determines to borrow one thousand pounds from the Marquis of Montrose (John Hurt). The wheres and whyfores are slightly complicated (manifestly humanitarian, of course), but the upshot of the deal is that word of the thousand pounds reaches the ears of the money-hungry English fop, Archibald Cunningham. In between twirling his lace cuffs and showing off his swordsmanship, Cunningham contrives to commit cool murder and expert theft, and the plot is off and running.

Archie, as he prefers to be called, just gets more and more evil. Burning villages? A lark. Killing cattle? Child's play. Rape is a little more satisfactory, and torture is really quite charming entertainment. Treachery, of course, adds a subtle spice to purely physical violence. Caton-Jones may overdo the characterization a bit, but Roth's performance steals the show, no doubt about it. Lucky Archie, thankfully unkilted, gets some juicy background to play on. He is a bitter bastard son, his possible fathers narrowed down to three. The material may be good, but it is Roth's control of cold eye and practiced diction which earn him the respect of the audience.

Unfortunately, Liam Neeson's performance is sloppier on all accounts. From semi-artsy actor, he seems to be mutating into an Irish Kevin Costner. The plains of the Midwest may be far from the Scottish highlands, but sensitive tribal men vanquish all boundaries. Bekilted and long-haired, Neeson is only concerned with his honor and his woman. Embarrassing petal-strewn love scenes are only a little worse than Rob Roy's lifeless professions of integrity and honor. Neeson's pallid presence does more to ruin the film than anything else.

Jessica Lange is a firebrand beside Neeson's drooping bulk, even if she is saddled with the stiff-upper-lip female role. And Brian McCardie, who plays the eager young Alasdair MacGregor, is an adorable hyperbole. Of course, he has to die.

Caton-Jones, at least, tried hard. You can-glimpse his effort in cute little by-the-way details. When MacGregor finally slaughters Cunningham (now you know--hopefully you won't bother to see for yourselves), the Marquis stoops over the body and pulls a cameo of Archie's mother out of the dead man's vest. Is the Marquis Archie's father? Intriguing, but we wish there had been some hint of the relationship beforehand. "Rob Roy" is fully of similar lagunas. One of the most glaring is the fade-out over the course of the film of the clan scene in favor of Rob's personal drama. While the first half is liberally sprinkled with campfire sing-alongs and rustic detail, Rob effectively forgets the well being of the tribe in the second half. It's nice that he ends up with a charming house on the cameraready highland, but what happened to all those starving children he was planning to save?

Caton-Jones exerts himself on the dialogue too, with patchy results. The kind of faux Shakespeare that worked so well in "The Madness of King George" falls flat here, and the Scottish brogue overpowers some of the humor. There are just a few too many "whists" floating around. The best lines go to Cunningham, of course. When asked if he makes a habit of "buggering young boys," he replies that the last boy he buggered (several years before) he mistook for a girl, "as I'm sure has happened to you gentlemen."

The camera work is especially disappointing. With the full expanse of the heather-clad highlands to exploit, Caton-Jones focuses over and over again on hackneyed panorama shots and unconvincing, Hollywood-esque interiors. The few inspired angles on gray sky and barren hillsides only whet the viewer's appetite. Again, directorial detail work is evidenced in the all-too-fake sets of bad teeth and in the caked-on facial dirt (Make-up #57): "Psst! This is the eighteenth century."

Why is all of this more depressing than it should be? Instead of just chalking it up as a another bad movie, and noting another two hours wasted, this reviewer couldn't get "Rob Roy"'s particular failure out of her head. Was it just that some of the time-worn sentiment managed to get around the chinks of conscious rejection and stick there uncomfortably? Maybe, Or maybe it was an uneasy empathy with the director, who tries so hard to be barely ordinary. The murky aims of the late twentieth century overshadow any clean drama of the eighteenth century in Caton-Jones's unfortunate saga.